Quote:(Reuters) - France's external intelligence agency spies on the French public's phone calls, emails and social media activity in France and abroad, the daily Le Monde said on Thursday.

It said the DGSE intercepted signals from computers and telephones in France, and between France and other countries, although not the content of phone calls, to create a map of "who is talking to whom". It said the activity was illegal.

"All of our communications are spied on," wrote Le Monde, which based its report on unnamed intelligence sources as well as remarks made publicly by intelligence officials.

"Emails, text messages, telephone records, access to Facebook and Twitter are then stored for years," it said.

Oh so you mean the US isn't the only one doing this? Shocker. This doesn't make either program right. Governments are overstepping their boundaries. I'm all for protecting citizens, but at what cost?
Pat

All of the opinions stated above are mine and do not represent Airliners.net or my employer unless otherwise stated.

Quote:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Seems pretty clear to me that such wiretaps are "unreasonable searches" and retaining the data is an "unreasonable seizure". Perhaps French law is similar?

Quoting Revelation (Reply 2):
Seems pretty clear to me that such wiretaps are "unreasonable searches" and retaining the data is an "unreasonable seizure". Perhaps French law is similar?

The metadata is legal under section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. Even before the Act was passed, though, there was a pen-trap exception which, with simple court approval that needed not reasonable doubt, allowed the who-you-called data to be collected; similar to the metadata collected by PRISM, legal under section 216 of the PATRIOT Act.

On another level, the second you send off something like an email you're handing it to a company's servers--and they can turn the information over to the government.

Quoting Aesma (Reply 4):Well it's not really the same thing. The international outrage over Prism is not that US citizens are spied on, that's not our concern. It's that WE are spied on. This French system is domestic.

What part don't you people understand that PRISM is not spying on US citizens. Am I missing something?

Just because a law purports something to be "legal" doesn't make it so. The PATRIOT Act is not a Constitutional amendment, and should be held to the same scrutiny as every other law with regards to the Constitution.

Quoting AA7295 (Reply 7):What part don't you people understand that PRISM is not spying on US citizens. Am I missing something?

Yes it is. PRISM spies on, well, everyone--including US Citizens. That's what a big part of the hullabaloo is about; some say that, under Fourth Amendment rights, we shouldn't be spied on like this.

Quoting Maverick623 (Reply 10):
Just because a law purports something to be "legal" doesn't make it so. The PATRIOT Act is not a Constitutional amendment, and should be held to the same scrutiny as every other law with regards to the Constitution.

Of course. It has been challenged several times and has always been found to be fine--no court has ever ruled against it.

The digital privacy debate is certainly one to be had, and it can easily go both ways.

PRISM collects data randomly. Yesterday we learned that the US scan each and every letter that is routed to and from the US and stores the senders and consignees name. Regardless if US citizens, green card holders or foreigners., Can be done easily since the high speed sorting machines collect that data anyhow.

With Patriot act US citizens and the rest of the world that deals with the US one way or the other surrender a part of their civil liberties. US citizens have to live with that, others can avoid the US oif they feel like, the crucial part is,, it is none of the US business who I call from my German phone to another German phone or anywhere else in the world except North America.

US laws do not apply outside the USA except when US citizens are involved. Period.

It has always been an open secret that the secret services spy on phone calls and internet communications. I believe the outrage is mostly contained due to the limited nature of it and the relative assurance that it is somewhat targeted at suspicious activities and individuals. There is an occasional outbreak of it when a media-spying scandal comes to light, especially when it is commandeered by ruling politicians...

That said, the scale of it on this side of the pond is nowhere near the sweeping, global, unlimited data filtering leviathan the NSA is unleashing upon us.
The amount of paranoia over here is much less significant, though I'm sure many in the ministry of defense and interior would gladly ramp the eavesdropping up if they had any money for it.

Article 10 of the German constitution bans spying inside Germany without a warrant, but I´m quite sure that the BND has a similar programme running. It seems that all western governments are happily assisting each other to allow their intelligence services break their respective laws. E.g. the NSA can´t spy on American citizens, so the British do it instead (using American technology) and then tell their American counterparts what they found. This way the laws a formaly obeyed with. The Americans inturn tell the British services about their findings on British citizens.
I wouldn´t be surprised if the French and German intelligence services have similar agreements with the other NATO countries.

Quoting francoflier (Reply 13):That said, the scale of it on this side of the pond is nowhere near the sweeping, global, unlimited data filtering leviathan the NSA is unleashing upon us.

Interesting that you feel confident making such an assertion.

Quoting francoflier (Reply 13):The amount of paranoia over here is much less significant, though I'm sure many in the ministry of defense and interior would gladly ramp the eavesdropping up if they had any money for it.

Indeed. A quick google says that NSA's budget is around $10b/year but that's just an estimate.

The article goes on to say:

Quote:
The NSA is one of at least 15 intelligence agencies, and combined the total U.S. intelligence budget in 2012 was $75 billion, said Steve Aftergood, director of the government secrecy program at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonpartisan think tank that analyzes national and international security issues.

Let us not forget that a certain British Prime Minister once hailed a South American gentleman as a champion of the free world.That particular gentleman was later granted immunity from prosecution by the law lords, if I am not mistaken.
More recently, it was shown that tthe UK was happy to accommodate Gaddafi by returning someone, knowing full well that he would be tortured.

If the average UK citizen is not currently in fear of being arbitrarily arrested it is because poltical conditions are more stable, not because the powers that be are morally superior. In any and every country, where agencies are able to operate in secret they will do whatever they can get away with. So it comes as no surprise that various bodies in European countries can and do spy on their citizens as a matter of routine. Sadly too many are happy to allow a free hand under the mistaken notion that somehow their freedoms are enhanced by a lack of oversight and transparency, all in the name of security.

Quoting AyostoLeon (Reply 20):Let us not forget that a certain British Prime Minister once hailed a South American gentleman as a champion of the free world.That particular gentleman was later granted immunity from prosecution by the law lords, if I am not mistaken.
More recently, it was shown that tthe UK was happy to accommodate Gaddafi by returning someone, knowing full well that he would be tortured.

And many in the UK were repulsed by that. Me included. As to the Law Lords, they did not reflect even the will of the government of the day.
However correct their interpretation of that aspect of the law was.

The only reason that gentleman was welcomed by some here was the patronage of a demented old bat who'd once been PM herself.
This even embarrassed many in her own party.

As for Qaddafi, in 2004 he agreed to stop his WMD programs, stop all funding of terrorism (which had affected the UK), stop his death squads hunting down opponents abroad - again including in the UK.
He did it out of fear and the effects of his countries then almost total isolation with it's crippling economic effects.

So deals were done, some rather unpalatable ones for many.
That sadly is realpolitik. That was at the time endorsed by the US and most EU nations.
Then he blew it by hugely overreacting to demos, threatening as well to resume some of his prior misdeeds.
Look what happened to him.
A bayonet up his back passage in a dirty street.

Quoting GDB (Reply 18):When they murder 30,000 of their own citizens, many never found, many more tortured, then you'll have bragging rights.
Until then, try a little perspective.

Yeah the perspective of "everything is so hunky-dory in the US/UK". War of aggression at least in Iraq ("the linchpin of all the other crimes" as per the Nuremberg tribunal). Renditions for torture. Illimited bailouts for failed and misbehaving banks by ways of money printing. Total Surveillance State without democratic debate about it.

May I suggest, you, Sir, try a little perspective? And may I suggest too that you tune down the condescension and chauvinistic defense of YOUR government? One is supposed to grow up to a level of maturity where they can see faults in their parents (10yo?) and then their rulers (15yo?). Jingoistic reflexive defense does not make for good debate.

As for French Surveillance. the overall budget of French intelligence is 600 million euros. The NSA alone is more than 10 times that.

All governments need to be tamed down with this. And the US government all the more so as they say in the leaked documents that the US has to capitalize on its "home player advantage", being the center of most internet giants or buying out the few which were not (skype for instance).

Quoting A380900 (Reply 22):May I suggest, you, Sir, try a little perspective? And may I suggest too that you tune down the condescension and chauvinistic defense of YOUR government? One is supposed to grow up to a level of maturity where they can see faults in their parents (10yo?) and then their rulers (15yo?). Jingoistic reflexive defense does not make for good debate.

If you had read any previous post by me on UK politics you'd know I'm no fan of the current UK government, you'd also know that I was against the 2003 Iraq war.
Perspective indeed, was Iraq driven by dishonest interpretation of intel? Yes.
But as an illegal 'war of aggression' it was about as illegal as the 1999 intervention in Kosovo.

So call me a 10 year old, I'm not the one quoting from the cliched knee jerk slogans.

I'm also not in favour of torture, for a start it doesn't work so well.
For another, it's immoral. For me it's like the death penalty, it's the same as abusing or killing prisoners of war. They are captured, threat over.

The real perspective is needed in terms of how intel and the laws like guide the state institutions, trying to keep up with the massive advances in communications technology and scope of the last 15 years.
From dial up Internet to today.
The other side of this is fear.
Fear of democratically elected governments losing power if they are perceived by their people to have fallen down on the part of their job that involves protecting their country from threats like terrorism.

We live in risk averse societies, many of those who might agree with this general point also are the ones, who like it or not, might be a silent majority who don't give a crap about how much snooping is done by governments as long as they think it's keeping threats at bay.
That's a simplistic view, somewhat depressing even, but likely more popular than all these activists, from a very narrow self selecting group, are prepared to concede.

Terrorists have used the net and other modern communications to plan and execute attacks.
The intel agencies have to respond to the changes in communications, the only debate should be to what extent.

Intel agencies in all nations have always had data.
Today's communications means that now, it's like data in every other walk of life, there is exponentially more of than there would have been just a few years ago.

While it's true that all too often the terrorist threat has been likened to former super power enemies, Nazi Germany, the USSR, which is absurd.
But it's not absurd that Al Queda have been driven in their planning by two obessions. One is attacking air transport, the other is getting some kind of WMD capability.
Something that Bin Laden spent much of his time in the late 1990's obessing about.

In this respect, Putin's rather unfriendly, authoritarian government has been of help. At least all those old nuke and chem/bio sites are better protected than they were in the 1990's.
The fact that Chechen terrorists would love to stick Moscow with a WMD no doubt was a motivating factor here too.

It's less likely, though not impossible, that Islamists could get a WMD than before.
Some of this has been helped by 'snooping' by governments.
Still, the fear is still there.

Quoting GDB (Reply 18):When they murder 30,000 of their own citizens, many never found, many more tortured, then you'll have bragging rights.
Until then, try a little perspective.

Quoting scbriml (Reply 19):Yes, we'd all be much better off in some South American tin-pot dictatorship. Oh wait...

It's my opinion. But in the entire history of England, I'm sure far far more than 30,000 have been tortured, murdered, and never found. Why stop the skeleton count at 1976? So I guess I do have bragging rights. Either we stick to the now (which I was sticking to, it was YOU bringing up a dictatorship 40 years in the past), or we can go back all the way through history... you can't have it both ways. And if we do that, no European nation comes out particularly clean, and Argentina looks like a saint in immaculate history.

That's my issue with you guys from the other side of the pond. You like taking credit for the Magna Carta but say the Slave trade was not your doing. Just saying.

Right now, the current UK is a country that George Orwell would have well used for one of his most famous works.

It is true that some terrorist events have involved airlines but I don't go so far as to suggest that al Qaeda is obsessed with attacking aircraft per se. First, there is no unified al Qaeda but more a loose network of various players who may or may not share the same goals, although they my equally profess some version of Islam as an ideological underpinning.

Second, groups claimed to be linked to al Qaeda have been just as ready to target busses, trains or crowded markets. The concentration of security screening at airports is largely, but not solely, due to the ease with which it can be conducted. Strip searching passengers waiting to board a bus in Edgware Road but be a bit more difficult.

That aside, targetting aircraft was less of an obsession than a strategy. It followed from a change in direction of terrorism form targeting local despots in the Middle East, "the near enemy", to targeting those seen as the principal backers - the US. Early attacks saw boats attacking naval vessels or car bombs at US embassies. These were soon seen as ineffectual and taking "Jihad" global meant taking it into the heart of "the far enemy." For a time the easiest way of doing that was seen as being attacks on aircraft.

On a more general note, terrorism is a real threat but it is not one that justifies a free hand to agencies to operate without oversight.

Quoting AyostoLeon (Reply 27):It is true that some terrorist events have involved airlines but I don't go so far as to suggest that al Qaeda is obsessed with attacking aircraft per se. First, there is no unified al Qaeda but more a loose network of various players who may or may not share the same goals, although they my equally profess some version of Islam as an ideological underpinning.

True, but they keep coming back to airliners. After all, that was their biggest ever hit. Nearly 3000 dead in 2001. Then the attempts with the shoe bomber, the attempt to smuggle devices on to 7 airliners out of LHR in 2006 (something they also tried out of Manila 10 years before), then 'spongebob flamepants' in 2009.

I would have agreed that AQ is more loose than in 2001, however the amount of material seized from Bin Laden's compound seemed to show that was still a more central command and control than many had thought.
The real driver in fragmenting them has been another Western policy that is controversial, the Drone strikes.

I had/have a theory that the reactions to the US spying news have been less aggressive than some people thought they'd be is because most of the other countries are very guilty themselves. They have to fake outrage but other than that, they let the status quo continue because they benefit as well.

Not condoning anything, but I think there is a lot more sneaky stuff going on than we think (more than the obvious stuff that everyone knows happens already)